The story of the Higgs boson - the so-called 'God particle' - and the man who thought of it In the summer of 1964, a reclusive young professor at the University of Edinburgh wrote two scientific papers which have come to change our understanding of the most fundamental building blocks of matter and the nature of the universe. Peter Higgs posited the existence an almost infinitely tiny particle - today known as the Higgs boson - which is the key to understanding why particles have mass, and but for which atoms and molecules could not exist. For nearly 50 years afterwards, some of the largest projects in experimental physics sought to demonstrate the physical existence of the boson which Higgs had proposed. Sensationally, confirmation came in July 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. The following year Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. One of the least-known giants of science, he is the only person in history to have had a single particle named for them. This revelatory book is 'not so much a biography of the man but of the boson named after him'. It brilliantly traces the course of much of twentieth-century physics from the inception of quantum field theory to the completion of the 'standard model' of particles and forces, and the pivotal role of Higgs's idea in this evolution. It also investigates the contested history of Higgs's responsibility for the breakthrough when there were others close by, and explains why the boson is named for him alone. Competition between institutions and states, Close shows, then played as much of a role in creating Higgs's fame as his work itself. Drawing on conversations with Higgs over a decade (a figure generally as elusive as his particle) this is a superb study of a scientist and his era - and of how scientific knowledge advances.

Not since Newton's apple has there been a physics phenomenon as deliciously appealing to the masses as Frank Close's Cosmic Onion. Widely embraced by scientists and laypersons alike, the book quickly became an international bestseller. Translated into seven languages, it propelled the author to become a worldwide celebrity as well as an inspiration to a generation of scientists. The book's title itself has entered popular usage as a metaphor for the layers that can be peeled away to understand the foundations of the physical world, from dimensions and galaxies, to atoms and quarks. "Close is a lucid, reliable, and enthusiastic guide to the strange and wonderful microcosmic world that dwells deep within reality" - Frank Wilczek, Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics, MIT, 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics NEW Material Explains the principles behind the Hadron Collider as well as the potential it presents Considers the recent development of the Electroweak Theory as a law of nature Explores the mysteries uncovered and the ones that may be in store with regard to top and bottom quarks Keeping still-pertinent contents from the original volume that caught the world's attention in 1983, this fresh edition of the Cosmic Onion includes extensive new material to reflect new views of the universe. Providing explanations that explore the foundations of 21st Century science and future directions, this work offers ready access and unique perspectives to more typical topics such as the forces of nature, atoms, the nucleus, and nuclear particles. It also travels down paths that only a true pioneer and educator can venture, such as a discussion of what Professor Close refers to as the Eightfold Way including the findings, surprises, and new questions emerging from the latest work with accelerators.

Not since Newton s apple has there been a physics phenomenon as deliciously appealing to the masses as Frank Close s Cosmic Onion. Widely embraced by scientists and laypersons alike, the book quickly became an international bestseller. Translated into seven languages, it propelled the author to become a worldwide celebrity as well as an inspiration to a generation of scientists. The book s title itself has entered popular usage as a metaphor for the layers that can be peeled away to understand the foundations of the physical world, from dimensions and galaxies, to atoms and quarks. Close is a lucid, reliable, and enthusiastic guide to the strange and wonderful microcosmic world that dwells deep within reality Frank Wilczek, Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics, MIT, 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics NEW Material Explains the principles behind the Hadron Collider as well as the potential it presents Considers the recent development of the Electroweak Theory as a law of nature Explores the mysteries uncovered and the ones that may be in store with regard to top and bottom quarks Keeping still-pertinent contents from the original volume that caught the world s attention in 1983, this fresh edition of the Cosmic Onion includes extensive new material to reflect new views of the

The distribution of quarks within protons and neutrons, their interactions, and how they define the properties of protons, neutrons and nuclei, are subjects of major research worldwide. Written by leading experts in the field, both theoretical and experimental, this book provides an authoritative overview on the subject. The emphasis throughout the book is on phenomenology, and the book concentrates on describing the main features of the experimental data and the theoretical ideas used in their interpretation. Sections on chiral perturbation theory, crucial in understanding soft pions and soft photons near threshold, and duality ideas, equally crucial at intermediate energies, are included. This is an essential reference for graduate students and researchers in the field of particle physics and electromagnetic interactions.

*A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice Selection* The first major biography of Peter Higgs, revealing how a short burst of work changed modern physics On July 4, 2012, the announcement came that one of the longest-running mysteries in physics had been solved: the Higgs boson, the missing piece in understanding why particles have mass, had finally been discovered. On the rostrum, surrounded by jostling physicists and media, was the particle's retiring namesake--the only person in history to have an existing single particle named for them. Why Peter Higgs? Drawing on years of conversations with Higgs and others, Close illuminates how an unprolific man became one of the world's most famous scientists. Close finds that scientific competition between people, institutions, and states played as much of a role in making Higgs famous as Higgs's work did. A revelatory study of both a scientist and his era, Elusive will remake our understanding of modern physics.

Frank Close, a leading physicist and talented popular science writer, reveals the true story of the cold fusion controversy--a story ignored until now in spite of the glare of publicity surrounding Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons. On March 23, 1989, these two Utah scientists held an astonishing press conference, maintaining that they had succeeded, working in secret, in harnessing atomic fusion. What was the basis for their claims to have achieved cold fusion in a test tube in a basement laboratory, while other scientists--using magnets as big as houses and temperatures hotter than those in the center of the sun--were failing to produce as much power as they were using? Why did Fleischmann and Pons proclaim their "discovery" at a news conference, when first announcements of scientific results are almost always made within the scientific community? Why did the full-blown media event inspired by their initial report cause governments to reorient their research programs in hopes of cornering the "new technology"? And why did some scientists recklessly abandon their traditional painstaking methods in haste to be first to prove or discredit the experiment? Acquainted at first hand with investigations of cold fusion on two continents, Close is uniquely qualified to probe the motivations behind Fleischmann's and Pons's startling assertions and to explore the intellectual and political turmoil that surrounded the cold fusion debate. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Frank Close, a leading physicist and talented popular science writer, reveals the true story of the cold fusion controversy--a story ignored until now in spite of the glare of publicity surrounding Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons. On March 23, 1989, these two Utah scientists held an astonishing press conference, maintaining that they had succeeded, working in secret, in harnessing atomic fusion. What was the basis for their claims to have achieved cold fusion in a test tube in a basement laboratory, while other scientists--using magnets as big as houses and temperatures hotter than those in the center of the sun--were failing to produce as much power as they were using? Why did Fleischmann and Pons proclaim their "discovery" at a news conference, when first announcements of scientific results are almost always made within the scientific community? Why did the full-blown media event inspired by their initial report cause governments to reorient their research programs in hopes of cornering the "new technology"? And why did some scientists recklessly abandon their traditional painstaking methods in haste to be first to prove or discredit the experiment? Acquainted at first hand with investigations of cold fusion on two continents, Close is uniquely qualified to probe the motivations behind Fleischmann's and Pons's startling assertions and to explore the intellectual and political turmoil that surrounded the cold fusion debate.

Originally published in 1991.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Antimatter explores a strange mirror world, where particles have identical yet opposite properties to those that make up the familiar matter we encounter everyday; where left becomes right, positive becomes negative; and where, should matter and antimatter meet, the two annihilate in a blinding flash of energy that makes even thermonuclear explosions look feeble by comparison. It is an idea long beloved of science-fiction stories-but here, renowned science writer Frank Close shows that the reality of antimatter is even more fascinating than the fiction itself. We know that once, antimatter and matter existed in perfect counterbalance, and that antimatter then perpetrated a vanishing act on a cosmic scale that remains one of the greatest mysteries of the universe. Today, antimatter does not exist normally, at least on Earth, but we know that it is real for scientists are now able to make small pieces of it in particle accelerators, such as that at CERN in Geneva. Looking at the remarkable prediction of antimatter and how it grew from the meeting point of relativity and quantum theory in the early 20th century, at the discovery of the first antiparticles, at cosmic rays, annihilation, antimatter bombs, and antiworlds, Close separates the facts from the fiction about antimatter, and explains how its existence can give us profound clues about the origins and structure of the universe. Oxford Landmark Science books are 'must-read' classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Following the discovery of the Higgs boson, Frank Close has produced this major revision to his classic and compelling introduction to the fundamental particles that make up the universe. Frank Close takes us on a journey into the atom to examine known particles such as quarks, electrons, and the ghostly neutrino, and explains the key role and significance of the Higgs boson. Along the way he provides fascinating insights into how discoveries in particle physics have actually been made, and discusses how our picture of the world has been radically revised in the light of these developments. He concludes by looking ahead to new ideas about the mystery of antimatter and massive neutrinos, and to what the next 50 years of research might reveal about the nature of the Higgs field which moulds the fundamental particles and forces. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

'Everything about this story is astounding' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times "Trinity" was the codename for the test explosion of the atomic bomb in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. Trinity is now also the extraordinary story of the bomb's metaphorical father, Rudolf Peierls; his intellectual son, the atomic spy, Klaus Fuchs, and the ghosts of the security services in Britain, the USA and USSR. Against the background of pre-war Nazi Germany, the Second World War and the following Cold War, the book traces how Peierls brought Fuchs into his family and his laboratory, only to be betrayed. It describes in unprecedented detail how Fuchs became a spy, his motivations and the information he passed to his Soviet contacts, both in the UK and after he went with Peierls to join the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos in 1944. Frank Close is himself a distinguished nuclear physicist: uniquely, the book explains the science as well as the spying. Fuchs returned to Britain in August 1946 still undetected and became central to the UK's independent effort to develop nuclear weapons. Close describes the febrile atmosphere at Harwell, the nuclear physics laboratory near Oxford, where many of the key players were quartered, and the charged relationships which developed there. He uncovers fresh evidence about the role of the crucial VENONA signals decryptions, and shows how, despite mistakes made by both MI5 and the FBI, the net gradually closed around Fuchs, building an intolerable pressure which finally cracked him. The Soviet Union exploded its first nuclear device in August 1949, far earlier than the US or UK expected. In 1951, the US Congressional Committee on Atomic Espionage concluded, 'Fuchs alone has influenced the safety of more people and accomplished greater damage than any other spy not only in the history of the United States, but in the history of nations'. This book is the most comprehensive account yet published of these events, and of the tragic figure at their centre.

What is 'nothing'? What remains when you take all the matter away? Can empty space - a void - exist? This Very Short Introduction explores the science and the history of the elusive void: from Aristotle who insisted that the vacuum was impossible, via the theories of Newton and Einstein, to our very latest discoveries and why they can tell us extraordinary things about the cosmos. Frank Close tells the story of how scientists have explored the elusive void, and the rich discoveries that they have made there. He takes the reader on a lively and accessible history through ancient ideas and cultural superstitions to the frontiers of current research. He describes how scientists discovered that the vacuum is filled with fields; how Newton, Mach, and Einstein grappled with the nature of space and time; and how the mysterious 'aether' that was long ago supposed to permeate the void may now be making a comeback with the latest research into the 'Higgs field'. We now know that the vacuum is far from being empty - it seethes with virtual particles and antiparticles that erupt spontaneously into being, and it also may contain hidden dimensions that we were previously unaware of. These new discoveries may provide answers to some of cosmology's most fundamental questions: what lies outside the universe, and, if there was once nothing, then how did the universe begin? ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The story of the Higgs boson - the so-called 'God particle' - and the man who thought of it In the summer of 1964, a reclusive young professor at the University of Edinburgh wrote two scientific papers which have come to change our understanding of the most fundamental building blocks of matter and the nature of the universe. Peter Higgs posited the existence an almost infinitely tiny particle - today known as the Higgs boson - which is the key to understanding why particles have mass, and but for which atoms and molecules could not exist. For nearly 50 years afterwards, some of the largest projects in experimental physics sought to demonstrate the physical existence of the boson which Higgs had proposed. Sensationally, confirmation came in July 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. The following year Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. One of the least-known giants of science, he is the only person in history to have had a single particle named for them. This revelatory book is 'not so much a biography of the man but of the boson named after him'. It brilliantly traces the course of much of twentieth-century physics from the inception of quantum field theory to the completion of the 'standard model' of particles and forces, and the pivotal role of Higgs's idea in this evolution. It also investigates the contested history of Higgs's responsibility for the breakthrough when there were others close by, and explains why the boson is named for him alone. Competition between institutions and states, Close shows, then played as much of a role in creating Higgs's fame as his work itself. Drawing on conversations with Higgs over a decade (a figure generally as elusive as his particle) this is a superb study of a scientist and his era - and of how scientific knowledge advances.

Nuclear physics began long before the identification of fundamental particles, with J. J. Thomson's discovery of the electron at the end of the 19th century, which implied the existence of a positive charge in the atom to make it neutral. In this Very Short Introduction Frank Close gives an account of how this area of physics has progressed, including the recognition of how heavy nuclei are built up in the cores of stars and in supernovae, the identification of quarks and gluons, and the development of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Exploring key concepts such as the stability of different configurations of protons and neutrons in nuclei, Frank Close shows how nuclear physics brings the physics of the stars to Earth and provides us with important applications, particularly in medicine. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Ich habe ein Teilchen postuliert, das nicht entdeckt werden kann, stellte der Physiker Wolfgang Pauli einst fest. Es brauchte lange Jahre, viel Geduld und grossen Einfallsreichtum, um einen indirekten, fluchtigen Blick auf das schwer fassbare Neutrino zu erhaschen und jene Kiste Champagner zu gewinnen, die Pauli auf dessen Entdeckung gewettet hatte. Hier nun ist die Geschichte, wie dieses aussergewohnlichste aller Teilchen ohne Ladung, fast ohne Masse, kaum mit Materie interagierend gesucht und gefunden wurde und wie uns die Neutrino-Astronomie heute tiefe Einblicke in die Herzen ferner Galaxien ermoglicht."

On 21 August 2017, over 100 million people will gather in a narrow belt across the USA to witness the most watched total solar eclipse in history. Eclipse - Journeys to the Dark Side of the Moon, written by the widely read popular science author Frank Close, describes the spellbinding allure of this most beautiful natural phenomenon. The book explains why eclipses happen, reveals their role in history, literature and myth, and focuses on eclipse chasers, who travel with ecstatic fervour to some of the most inaccessible places on the globe to be present at the moment of totality. The book includes the author's quest to solve a 3000 years old mystery: how did the moon move backwards during a total solar eclipse, as claimed in the Book of Joshua? It is an inspirational tale: how a teacher and an eclipse inspired the author, aged eight, to a life in science, and a love affair with eclipses, which takes him to a war zone in the Western Sahara, to the South Pacific and the African bush. The tale comes full circle with another eight-year old boy - the author's grandson - at the 2017 great American eclipse. Readers of all ages will be drawn to this inspirational chronicle of the mesmerizing experience of total solar eclipse.

Speculation is rife that by 2012 the elusive Higgs boson will be found at the Large Hadron Collider. If found, the Higgs boson would help explain why everything has mass. But there's more at stake,what we're really testing is our capacity to make the universe reasonable. Our best understanding of physics is predicated on something known as quantum field theory. Unfortunately, in its raw form, it doesn't make sense,its outputs are physically impossible infinite percentages when they should be something simpler, like the number 1. The kind of physics that the Higgs boson represents seeks to renormalize" field theory, forcing equations to provide answers that match what we see in the real world. The Infinity Puzzle is the story of a wild idea on the road to acceptance. Only Close can tell it.

What are neutrinos? Why does nature need them? What use are they? Neutrinos are perhaps the most enigmatic particles in the universe. Formed in certain radioactive decays, they pass through most matter with ease. These tiny, ghostly particles are formed in millions in the Sun and pass through us constantly. For a long time they were thought to be massless, and passing as they do like ghosts they were not regarded as significant. Now we know they have a very small mass, and there are strong indications that they are very important indeed. It is speculated that a heavy form of neutrino, that is both matter and antimatter, may have shaped the balance of matter and antimatter in the early universe. Here, Frank Close gives an account of the discovery of neutrinos and our growing understanding of their significance, also touching on some speculative ideas concerning the possible uses of neutrinos and their role in the early universe.

The memo landed on Kim Philby's desk in Washington, DC, in July 1950. Three months later, Bruno Pontecorvo, a physicist at Harwell, Britain's atomic energy lab, disappeared without a trace. When he re-surfaced six years later, he was on the other side of the Iron Curtain. One of the most brilliant scientists of his generation, Pontecorvo was privy to many secrets: he had worked on the Anglo-Canadian arm of the Manhattan Project, and quietly discovered a way to find the uranium coveted by nuclear powers. Yet when he disappeared MI5 insisted he was not a threat. Now, based on unprecedented access to archives, letters, surviving family members and scientists, award-winning writer and physics professor Frank Close exposes the truth about a man irrevocably marked by the advent of the atomic age and the Cold War.